A critique of reason in contemporary Arab-Islamic intellectual discourse with special reference to Muhammad `Abid al-Jabiri

Abstract

The aim of this thesis is to critically examine the contemporary Arab-Islamic discourse of the critique of reason, especially as propounded by Muhammad 'Abid al-Jabiri. For this purpose, the thesis is divided into six chapters. The first chapter deals with the background, importance and significance of the subject under discussion; the second chapter explores the views of selected modern and contemporary Arab Muslim scholars on reason. This is done in order to locate the thought of Jabiri in the present context. Jabiri's intellectual development is presented in Chapter three. Chapters four and five are specifically dedicated to discuss the thought of Jabiri. The study reveals that Jabiri, like most Arab scholars, holds a belief that the root cause of the crisis besetting Arab-Muslim society today basically lies in reason/mind (al-'aql). He opines that this reason/mind is undergoing a crisis of structure (azmah bunyah). The main problem of this reason, according to him, is that it never undertakes an auto-criticism. The Arab scholars fail to undertake a critique of reason. As a result, it continues being dominated by turath, and thus by qiyas which serves as an intellectual mechanism. The domination of this intellectual mechanism, Jabiri argues, goes back to the triumph of bayani (expository) and 'irfani (gnostic) systems of knowledge in the past. The main characteristic of the bayani system is that it is textually oriented and heavily relies on qiyas, while the 'irfani system resorts to intuition as a channel of gaining knowledge, which is irrational and empirically unproved. Jabiri does not see any hope in these two epistemes. To him, only the burhani system, which developed in the Islamic western milieu, al-Maghrib and Andalusia, and which is epitomized in the personality of Ibn Rushd, can help Arabs realize their renaissance. Many of Jabiri's views have become subjects of criticism. Many regard his reading of turath is no less ideological than those whom he criticizes.